Justice?
by Daryl Falchion
Summary: A brief story I wrote for a fanfic competition about D and his everlasting struggle with humanity's creulty. Complete


A Vampire Hunter D Fanfic

_Justice?_

By Daryl Falchion

"_Transient guests, are we?"_

-Count Dracula, 10010 AD

He awoke when the barn door was beat in.

D had taken refugee in the musty barn when his request for lodgings at the local inn was "rudely denied". Two armed guards had come at him but the expert swordsman had knocked them on their behinds with a well-placed smack of his sword's hilt. Not unaccustomed to "roughing it" the vampire hunter used his keen senses to locate the abandoned building and bedded down on some hay.

The rest had lasted a less than fifty minutes when light from a hundred torches assaulted his beautiful eyes and those eyes were greeted with the sight of a like-number of peasants screaming their heads off with comments of 'murderer' and swinging grass scythes and rusted swords. He'd been in the town for less than an hour and already his presence had alerted and incited a mob.

Not unaccustomed to that either, D rose slowly, tipping his wide-brimmed hat up and lifting his sword, the crescent-shaped blade gleaming in the firelight. With one calm stare from the swordsman and hush like a graveyard fell over the crowd. A miasma only his kind could evoke enveloped them. Some shivered. Several whimpered. Every single one of them stood lifeless.

D said simply. "Go home."

They crowd scattered, falling over each other in haste. A litany of weapons fell to the barn floor, sending up small clouds of dust. When the last of them had fled, D deserted the barn himself and headed down the market district. Something had aside from his presence had sparked the crowd and he could readily figure what. The cool breeze stirred his dark tresses and black cloak as he moved as a shadow, silent and deadly.

The crowd, after having recovered from his "spell", would return and he would need to tend to this matter before they did.

A voice from his left hand spoke, the sound snide and mocking. "Every time you do this you know what happens. Just get the hell out of here." A small cry of pain could be heard as D clenched his fist. Regardless of the truth of the words coming from the symbiote in his hand, D would venture on and continue his self-imposed duty. He knew no other life.

He sniffed. No mistaking it—blood. The swordsman approached an old house at the outskirts of town, sword held at ready. Paint chips fell to the stones and the fence creaked as D opened and passed through. Nothing but the wind and the rusted hinges could be heard to the normal ear but he heard the sound of a beating heart and the growls of a creature of the night.

Yes, he was right. It was as he feared.

Entering the dilapidated home, D's steps in the living room made less sound than the moonlight shining in through a broken window. His blue pendant brightened. Yes, it was near. Very near. A shadow stirred to his left...

The afterimage of the swordsman's leap and thrust would bedazzle any onlooker had there been any. But his blade bit naught but empty air. Again, D swung his sword in a silvery flash and again the shadow flittered away. Hearing footsteps he glanced up a staircase to see a young boy of six or seven running down them.

Before the swordsman could say anything the shadow swept up those same steps. Then the shadow rematerialized into the shape of a thirty-some odd woman of gleaming golden hair. The same hair as the boy that jumped into her arms. Mother and son. Only not so much mother if what he sensed was correct...

"Leave me and my son alone, you demon!" she cried, eyes glowing red. D knew what that meant. Had seen those same eyes a hundred times before...had worn them often enough himself.

"Go, you meanie!" the boy added. "Don't hurt my mommy!"

D halted in mid-step, lips parted slightly. Considering his demeanor, the fact that he'd reacted at all was something of a rarity but the predicament he faced contributed to that. "That is not your mother. She's changed. Come to me and I will protect you from here."

"No!"

Slipping forward a single step, the swordsman stopped again as the woman shrieked. His eyes shot up to see her teeth elongate and narrow the distance to the boy's throat. D had not a moment to lose. His sword was as one of those moonbeams as it cleanly sliced the woman's head off. Not missing a beat, he caught the boy and dragged him down the stairs.

'No...Mommy! You murdered my mommy!!"

"She's not your mother anymore. She's a vamp—"

The boy broke free of his grip and darted out of the home. D followed him into the street. It was then that his eyes caught sight of the same crowd as before. The moment they saw him they surrounded the swordsman, wielding a new assortment of ill-crafted weapons. If he so desired D could tear a path of destruction within seconds. Was there another way...?

Pointing at him, the boy screamed, "He killed my mommy!"

D let out a soft sigh. So Leftie was right. In a manner of speaking for a _left_ hand.

"Is that so?!" a man in the crowd cried. "Cut down that half-breed murderer!"

The moment the first weapon drew near, D flew into action. It was as a horrible play where the ending is slow and gruesome. Those that could be spared, were. Those that couldn't, perished swiftly and almost painlessly on his sword. The blood filled the ground from many a wound...none of which was D's own. All the while the child cried.

Finally hacking a path open after only two deaths, D ran as the wind itself towards the town's rear exit. He did not look back. He did not need to. The devastation he wrecked in a mere minute would deter any sort of pursuit at least until the next day. He did not stop running until he crested a hill, long cloak billowing out behind the swordsman.

"I save their lives from the vampire and they run me out of town," came his melodious voice. Though almost strictly stanch, a hint of sorrow could be heard. "Where's the justice in that?"

"Justice is an overrated concept," said the voice from his left hand. "You know it's not what you do, but what you are that they see."

In the darkness D's eyes flashed crimson and then faded. A musical sound chimed as his sword, wiped clean of the blood, slip smoothly into his sheath at his back. One finger tipped up his hat. Time to find a new town and a new place to lay his head down...

Until the next time...

fin


End file.
